Accounting/ Finance Student Supplies | Study

When I was a kid, going back to school supply shopping was always like a second Christmas. I would get a bunch of stuff I really didn’t need, but those sales were too good to ignore. Then once I went home it was so exciting to pack my backpack full of my brand new pencils, folders, notebooks and everything else I could get my hands on.

Now that I’m in my last year of class for my second college degree, buying a bunch of random things isn’t in my agenda. After all of these years of schooling, I’ve gotten it pretty narrowed down to what I will actually use during the semester and what I need to buy. Since this is my last year of college (hopefully for good this time,) I did splurge a little. I kind of wanted all of my supplies to fit the certain “aesthetic” (gag, I hate that word) I was going for this year: marble, rose gold, white and black. Basic? Perhaps. Will they help me stay studious? At least for the first few weeks.

I did most of my shopping at Target and got one or two things from Office Depot, Walmart and Amazon.

Now back to my accounting/finance students. These are some of supplies I recommend to get you through your major courses.

Writing Utensils

If you only bring one thing, bring something to write with. Some students like to take notes on their laptops, but I’m old fashion with my note taking. Especially in accounting, finance and other math related courses. There’s nothing worse than trying to type what the prof is writing on the board and you can’t find the symbol they keep using on your keyboard. Just stick to pencil and paper if you can.

My favorite’s are the BIC 4-Color stylus pen: I absolutely love this pen! It’s 4 pens and a stylus in one. This is actually the only pen I used this past year of college. I love to color code my notes while in class and this makes it super simple. Very minimal as well. It doesn’t fit into my marble/rose gold style at all, but it’s a great pen that doesn’t bleed through thin paper. I also use the stylus tip to take notes and highlight while reading ebooks on my iPad.

Another pen worth mentioning is this Sparkle Ballpoint Pen in Rose Gold. I just picked it up, but it’s a gorgeous black ink pen with lots of glitter to keep you entertained when your eyes have glassed over those last 15 minutes of class.

If you need to really make something in your notes standout, I like the Zebra Mildliner pastel highlighters. They aren’t as neon as normal highlighters and are easier on the eye while reading.

Also, be sure to have a few of your favorite pencils with really good erasers for exam days. A container of quick drying white out, or white out tape is also good to have on hand if you use pens frequently.

Paper Products

I tried to find cute note books, but unfortunately they don’t come in college ruled and definitely not in quad ruled. So I just tried to find what I could in black and white. Target and Walmart had a couple decent options, shown in the photo. If you’re a college student no matter what you’re studying, I recommend you use college ruled paper. You’re going to be taking a ton of notes and the less paper you use is the best. If you find some you like, go ahead and stock up, because no telling what will be in stock next year. If you’re taking accounting, finance or statistics classes definitely use quad-ruled note books/paper. It makes it easy to draw straight lines and keep things in order without taking up a ton of space on the paper. The quad-ruled notebooks from Walmart were huge! I didn’t notice it at first but the sticker said they were 9” x 11”. This is great because we’re always drawing tables filled with a lot of information, so the extra space will come in handy.

Tech-ish

Moving on to some tech-ish supplies you might want to have on hand, a very useful item is a financial calculator. I use the HP0bII. If you’re a finance major/minor, I recommend you really spend some quality time figuring this thing out as it will be extremely helpful. Especially if your prof lets you use them on your exams.

For those accounting students, like me, I wouldn’t spend to much time focusing on the financial calculator. On our accounting exams we could only use a basic 4-function calculator, to help “prepare us for the CPA” sigh. So make sure you get a good one, with rubberized buttons, and a big enough screen for you. Make sure it uses commas in its readings as well. I bought a calculator that didn’t display commas, and I hated using it. I was always paranoid about reading the number wrong and had to count each digit just to be sure.

“Also, be sure to get acquainted with Microsoft Excel! While you can’t use it on exams it makes your life a hell of a lot easier while reviewing and doing homework problems which, let’s be honest, is the basis of learning accounting.”

Also, be sure to get acquainted with Microsoft Excel! While you can’t use it on exams it makes your life a hell of a lot easier while reviewing and doing homework problems which, let’s be honest, is the basis of learning accounting. It also made things super easy while making financial statements. If you make a mistake on one, it can screw up all of your statements, but in excel fixing the mistake in one will correct the corresponding error in the other statements.

This is unnecessary, but I really liked having a tablet for school stuff. I commute to class, and I like to keep my bag as light as possible. So having all of my textbooks in pdf form made my life a lot easier. I combined my iPad with the PDF Expert 6 app so that I could annotate my textbooks and any digital notes I created.

Those are my top recommendations for school supplies. Good luck on the new semester, hopefully in a few months we can all have a smile about the 4.0 we earned!